Further Reading

Seth, a software engineer who works at home, bought a house in Kitsap County, Washington, after being told by multiple Comcast employees that he could buy the Internet service he needs to do his job, according to a detailed Consumerist article yesterday. Seth also wrote a lengthy account on his blog titled, "It’s Comcastic, or: I Accidentally Bought a House Without Cable." (The man's last name was not given.)

"Before we even made an offer [on the house], I placed two separate phone calls; one to Comcast Business, and one to Xfinity," Seth wrote. "Both sales agents told me that service was available at the address. The Comcast Business agent even told me that a previous resident had already had service. So I believed them."

That turned out to be untrue. After multiple visits from Comcast technicians, he says the company told him extending its network to his house would cost $60,000, of which he would have to pay an unspecified amount. But then Comcast allegedly pulled the offer.

"After about seven weeks of pointless install appointments, deleted orders, dead ends, and vague sky-high estimates, Comcast told him that it had decided to simply not do the extension," according to the Consumerist story. "The company wouldn’t even listen to Seth’s offers to pay for a good chunk of the cost."

We contacted Comcast to get more details last night but haven't heard back.

After getting nowhere with Comcast, Seth tried getting DSL Internet from CenturyLink, which told him it could provide service of up to 10Mbps.

"After that very first Comcast tech told Seth there was no cable infrastructure to his house, he contacted CenturyLink. The company promised to get him hooked up right away," Consumerist wrote. "But then the next day he got a call informing him that his area was in 'Permanent Exhaust' and that CenturyLink wouldn’t be adding new customers. Of course, that didn’t stop CenturyLink from billing Seth more than $100 for service he never received and will never be able to receive. Seth then had to convince someone with CenturyLink’s billing department to zero out the account that should have never been opened."

Besides Comcast and CenturyLink, the Kitsap Public Utility District operates a gigabit fiber network that passes near Seth's house, Consumerist wrote. "So why can’t he just get his service from the county? Because Washington is one of the half-dozen states that forbids municipal broadband providers from selling service directly to consumers," the article said.

Further Reading

Nationwide, about 20 states impose limits on municipal broadband in order to protect private Internet providers from competition. The Federal Communications Commission voted to preempt such laws in Tennessee and North Carolina after receiving petitions from municipal providers in those states but is facing a lawsuit over the decision.

Consumerist reporter Chris Morran contacted both Comcast and CenturyLink but was unable to get a satisfactory answer about Seth's case, he wrote.

"Even though Comcast was given weeks to research and comment on Seth’s story, the company has yet to provide Consumerist with a statement or explanation of how it could not only fail to keep an accurate accounting of serviceable addresses, but why it continued to send tech after tech to do installs that couldn’t be done," Morran's article states.

CenturyLink provided Consumerist a short statement: "We researched the issue and found that there was an error in our system, which we are updating.”

"That was two days ago, and yet as of right now the CenturyLink website still says Seth’s address can get broadband service," Morran wrote.

To get his work done, Seth wrote that he is using a Verizon Wireless mobile hotspot that is "frightfully expensive and has a 30GB per month cap... When I want to download a big file, like an OS update or a VM image for work, I go to the local Starbucks. Their Wi-Fi is great."

Seth could get satellite service, but his work requires a VPN connection, which would be unreliable with satellite's high latency.

While Comcast, the country's biggest cable company, tells the federal government it faces so much competition that it should be allowed to merge with the second biggest cable operator, a government database designed to tell consumers what options they have for Internet service is offering inaccurate information.

The National Broadband Map lets you enter any address in the US to find out what Internet access options are available. The database shows 10 options at Seth's house, including mobile and satellite, but they're all either inadequate for home Internet service or unavailable. One of the 10 options is that fiber network that residents cannot use.

"I’m devastated. This means we have to sell the house," Seth wrote. "The house that I bought in December, and have lived in for only two months."

In a case like this, where he did everything right, what is his recourse?

He should be able to sue Comcast because he relied on their false representation that the house already had cable ("detrimental reliance"). Unfortunately, because he was never technically their customer and never had a contract for service, there is probably very little that he can do.